NASA’s TESS Swipes Left on Every Planet, Stuck Dating Earth

*Originally published April 26th, 2020 in Scientific Jamaican. Used without permission.

Colonizing space used to be the stuff of dreamers. Unfortunately, it still is. After a two-year mission of playing the starfield, NASA’s TESS is giving up the search for a decent, rich and emotionally-available exoplanet and is settling for her ex: Planet Earth.

Two years ago, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) broke up with her longtime partner, Earth. After a heated debate on whether climate change was real, TESS decided they both needed some time to cool off.

Looking to establish herself as an independent satellite who was totally over Earth, TESS threw a launch party in Cape Canaveral celebrating her new startup, Twinklr, a social media platform for stars, planets and other SJWs, Spatial Justice Warriors. Unfortunately, the site’s name was confusing. Everyone thought Twinklr was a dating app for slim gay men. An enterprising satellite, TESS rebranded her company as a dating app for celestial bodies to find their “twinkling star-crossed lovers.” TESS hoped that she’d even find someone of her own.

The first Twinklr matches TESS got were all from her own solar system. None of them quite worked out. Mercury and Venus were too hot for TESS. Definitely out of her league. Mars was a nice guy, but TESS wasn’t really into redheads. Jupiter was an unrefined slob, always passing gas in public. Saturn was a player who pretended to be single, but TESS could see the tan-lines left by his rings. Uranus was a butt-ugly buttmunch who was always the butt of every joke. He also had chronic constipation. Neptune was cold, distant and pretentious. A self-taught expressionist painter, he constantly claimed to be on his “blue period.” TESS’s date with Pluto, the last of her nearby matches, was a disaster. A small-minded wannabe, Pluto didn’t measure up to TESS’s expectations.

Relentless, TESS decided to try dating some foreign planets, but even then, there were irreconcilable differences. Vulcan was a boring, emotionless planet who would argue all the time with annoyingly sound logic. Tatooine was a real creep who only dated twins. Gallifrey was a clumsy oaf who was always needed to go to the Doctor because he was constantly falling down. Caprica was a nice and criminally underrated planet, although she could get rather preachy at times and would never resolve her issues. The last planet TESS tried, Krypton, had a weird thing for skin-tight bodysuits and capes, and TESS didn’t like her comic book planets to come in Fifty Shades of Grey. Krypton also would never shut up about his glowing healing crystals.

Unable to find a perfect match, TESS finally came back to Earth. Her friend Hubble was not impressed. Scientific Jamaican reached out to Hubble for a comment.

“She’s too picky,” says Hubble. “She’s like Goldilocks. Her partner can’t be too hot, and they can’t be too cool. They have to be just right.”

TESS’s other “friend” Spitzer was not asked by Scientific Jamaican for an opinion, but he called the editor, anyway.

Currently, there is an active restraining order on Spitzer. He may not come within 50,000 miles of TESS.

NASA’s scientists were not enthused with TESS’s reconnection with Earth either. “Global warming has made Earth really inhospitable,” says Stephon Gawking, administrator of NASA. “We were hoping TESS would find a new planet to settle down with, but it didn’t work out. Looks like we’re all screwed. And not in a sexy way.”

TESS currently is living with Earth in a trailer on a landfill. We approached Earth’s trailer for an interview with TESS. Instead, we were angrily chased away by Earth, who thought we were trying to recycle her hoards of trash. The following morning, we received the following message in the mail written on a used napkin riddled with spelling errors: